eged nations. This belief was confirmed by what I heard from men
of mark, leaders of the labor people, and three Prime Ministers. They
assured me that such an appeal would have evoked an enthusiastic
response in their respective countries. Convinced that the principles
laid down by the President during the last phases of the war would go
far to meet the exigencies of the conjuncture, I ventured to write on
one of the occasions, when neither party would yield to the other: "The
very least that Mr. Wilson might now do, if the deadlock continues, is
to publish to the world the desirable objects which the United States
are disinterestedly, if not always wisely, striving for, and leave the
judgment to the peoples concerned."[288]

But he recoiled from the venture. Perhaps it was already too late. In
the judgment of many, his assent to the suppression of the problem of
the freedom of the seas, however unavoidable as a tactical expedient,
knelled the political world back to the unregenerate days of strategical
frontiers, secret alliances, military preparations, financial burdens,
and the balance of power. On that day, his grasp on the banner relaxing,
it fell, to be raised, it may be, at some future time by the peoples
whom he had aspired to lead. The contests which he waged after that
first defeat had little prospect of success, and soon the pith and
marrow of the issue completely disappeared. The utmost he could still
hope for was a paper covenant--- which is a different thing from a
genuine accord--to take home with him to Washington. And this his
colleagues did not grudge him. They were operating with a different cast
of mind upon a wholly different set of ideas. Their aims, which they
pursued with no less energy and with greater perseverance than Mr.
Wilson displayed, were national. Some of them implicitly took the ground
that Germany, having plunged the world in war, would persist
indefinitely in her nefarious machinations, and must, therefore, in the
interests of general peace, be crippled militarily, financially,
economically, and politically, for as long a time as possible, while her
potential enemies must for the same reason be strengthened to the utmost
at her expense, and that this condition of things must be upheld through
the beneficent instrumentality of the League of Nations.

On these conflicting issues ceaseless contention went on from the start,
yet for lack of a strong personality of sound, over-ruling judg